I was never super close with any of my grandparents. I liked them all, and I did spend a good amount of time with them as a kid, but we never had the kind of like, talk for hours and have deep conversations relationship that some people talk about with grandparents, or that I have with some other members of my family.

I don’t feel like I know what the normal reactions to anything are, anymore, or possibly ever. But I have been trying to think about her, and how my grandparents were of course responsible for and in turn affected my unique family and upbringing, and, in some cases, trying to force external emotional reactions via sad songs. So instead of meditating on grief or whatever, I thought I’d just share a little bit about how my grandmother’s idiosyncratic life contributed to my unique existence.

We love telling people about how my grandma went to college when she was 14. Early in high school, she took a citywide test where the top scorers got scholarships to go to college early at the University of Chicago. That’s where she met my grandpa. She sat behind him in class and admired the shape of his head.

She ended up graduating with a masters degree (!) at 20, and spent a year in New York, working for Time. My grandpa wrote her letters every day, and eventually proposed via mail. When she accepted, he responded, “Hooray!”

They moved to Whitewater when my grandpa got a job as a history professor at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. I believe they lived in the same house the entire time, where my mom and her siblings grew up, where my aunt has been living for the past few years as she spent every day with my grandma in a nearby care facility.

Space wise, it was a small-ish ranch house, but it still feels expansive in my memories of my childhood. There’s a large backyard with a creek running through it — well, sometimes a creek, sometimes just a trickle. I remember sticking a plastic peanut into a hole in a decorative fence when I was a kid and either getting a splinter or getting upset that I couldn’t get the peanut out. I’m sure someone in my family remembers the details. We’re the type of people who repeat stories and anecdotes until they’re embedded in a communal history, even when the moments themselves are too minor to warrant such storied retelling. It’s a habit I’ve brought along to every group of friends I’ve ever had, my relationships, my jobs, and, of course, my writing.

They had a pool table in the basement (actually my grandparents on the other side in Wausau did too, which confounds me to this day … was it more common then or …) There was a strange old baby carriage in that basement, too, that gave me the creeps whenever I looked at it. They had a laundry chute from the bathroom down there that I can still feel myself opening.

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Violet’s husband, my grandpa Henry, died when I was much younger – I think when I was 12 or 13? The stories of him as a professor were notorious: (or, again, perhaps just for our familial retelling,) keeping a list of every single way that a student ever misspelled ‘renaissance,’ spending all day in the library to confirm his hunch that a student had plagiarized. When everyone was freaking out about y2k, he said, “Even if something happened, it wouldn’t be until 2001, because of zero-based counting.”

My family still talks about him all the time. I wonder if that made my grandma happy, sad, or something in between. She never remarried, or dated as far as I know, but the reasoning behind it — like so many things — will now remain lost to time.

I don’t regret not asking my grandma these things, though. I knew when she was alive that I could, in theory, but she wasn’t the type of person to welcome emotional lines of questioning. She was more likely to respond with a sarcastic or witty comeback. And you know, I didn’t mind. I still don’t. Not everyone has to be down to express every feeling at every moment, or share the emotional backbone of their decision making. Some things are allowed to be lost to time. People can keep things to themselves.

Once, when I was back in Wisconsin for a week or so and declined an offer of a beer at lunch, she asked me “What, are you here to dry out?” The last time I took my dog to Whitewater, when she was still living in the house, as we left she said, “Goodbye Margie, Rebecca, Rachel, Beto (my mom’s dog,) and… (looking at Artemis) Goodbye to whatever that thing is.” During a discussion of obituaries and eulogies a few years ago, I told everyone I’d always be on hand to help, and she looked at me with what I can only describe as revulsion, and said, “No!”

When I smell a greasy breakfast, I think about the pancake breakfast fundraisers at the Kiwanis club in Whitewater. More than the beach and rooftop parties of my adulthood, the Fourth of July will always make me think first of the parade that was just a block away from my grandparents house on Esterly Avenue, patio chairs dragged out to watch, jumping for candy from the floats.

My grandparents both played tennis late into their lives, and most of my family has continued on with the obsession (if not the actual playing …) I was a late arrival, but bartending the US Open finally gave me the tennis bug. I’m excited to be back there in a few weeks, to spend more 12 hour days in the sun thinking about sport and family and the passage of time while overheating at Arthur Ashe.

I did cry a lot during the last episode of Hacks. (IYKYK.) I mentioned this to a friend when talking about how I hadn’t been very emotional and they were like ‘well…I think THAT’s connected.’ Sure, sure. But I think emotions also just look differently on me now, at 35, than they did from 16-32 or whatever my peak years of Crying and Sentimentality were. A lot less intensity, a lot more sitting and thinking. Honestly, it’s probably mostly because of being on antidepressants, lol, (another family tradition!,) but I also like to think that it’s part of the nature of change, the realization that things you thought were deeply true to the core of your personality can just be a season of your life, that life will be long enough to experience entirely new facets of yourself you didn’t know existed.

A few years ago, my cousins and my sister and I went to see Taylor Swift at MetLife. (My sister and I went again in France, but that’s a story for another day.) I wasn’t really a ‘cry at the Taylor Swift concert’ kind of fan, but I did nearly shed a tear when Marjorie came on. I looked at my cousins and my sister and thought about how long ago it was that Violet and Henry met and got married and raised four children in a small town in Wisconsin, and that four of their five grandchildren were together so many years later, listening to a song about grandparents and family legacies and the passage of time. Not to toot my own horn, but I think we’re a beautiful legacy. Taylor’s grandmother was an opera singer. After raising the four children, Babi went back to work at the library for many years. Henry, as I said, was a history professor. My aunt Anna was a librarian, my mom is an editor, I’m an editor and writer. I see it all connect so clearly. Seeing my sister and cousins weekly, having real friendships with many of my aunts and uncles, I know how rare that is these days.

I credit being raised by such an interesting family with so much of my cultural and intellectual sensibility. I came to realize in my twenties how lucky and privileged I was to grow up with such strong cultural literacy, how as much as I could credit my tiny interdisciplinary studies program for being able to hold my own in a group of people in New York talking about Ulysses, I had to credit my family equally or more. There are many so kinds of privilege, and though we weren’t rich, I know that in some ways the literary acuity is harder to come by. I try to never lose sight of that even through the warring impulses of being surrounded by people who have immense monetary privilege and the inherent reluctance to calling attention to any type of privilege at all.

The other day my boyfriend said ‘I think within fifty years they might have figured out how to stop aging’ and I said, first, ‘Doubt it,’ and second, ‘But I also don’t think they should.’ I think 90-100 years is actually pretty good in terms of lifespan, like we already have the ideal age figured out and it should be more about helping people get there with dignity than trying to expand it exponentially and artificially. You all know how I hate that weird anti-aging guy. What’s the point, if you’re just spending all your time trying to avoid aging (yet somehow they always skip sleeping…but I digress…) but not really living?

Violet’s birthday would be this week, and the usual thing to say woudl be that it’s sad she didn’t make it to 98 or wahtever, but you know, I think it’s okay … she had an epic run, as my uncle said, and what are years and dates in the grand scheme of a life well lived.

Oh, I also moved apartments two days before I left for Redlands. Lol. T’wasn’t ideal! I did lay awake a select few nights on both journeys and wonder: WHY.

I certainly didn’t plan it this way, except for the ways in which I did. Like, had I been the God of the circumstances, I would have spread everything out a little more. Yes, I said yes to everything, but what would I have said no to?! I would never turn down an invitation to teach in Redlands in May Term. Julie and I had been planning the Paris alumni trip for months already. At the outset, it looked convenient that the Paris alumni trip was going to be similar timing to my sister’s wedding. More time in France! I didn’t think about how that also meant more time away from home, or rather, when all these things were materializing, I had no idea how much change my concept of home in New York would go through by the time I was actually leaving.

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For most of the past several years, my life was barely changing at all. I’d settled into my various New York friend groups long ago, I wasn’t dating, taking care of an elderly yet still psychotic dog is basically always the same. Freelancing is by its nature a constantly changing enterprise, but my anchor gig had stayed the same, and a new client here or there and/or a new bartending gig wasn’t enough to make me feel like I was making any sort of progress in life. My novel, unfinished. A new article here or there, but nothing that changed the trajectory of my career. There was no ending to the reminders that everyone else’s life seemed to be clipping ahead apace: weddings, engagements, pregnancies, promotions, buying a home, moving away, moving here, new job, new boyfriend, new life. I didn’t dislike my life by any means, but I did have a creeping fear that another five years would pass and I’d still be exactly the same, skilled enough to tread water to keep my life afloat but not skilled enough to conjure it into something new.

Then, late last fall, after I’d already made my plans to leave for two months in the spring, everything started changing very quickly. I started talking to an old flame again, and instead of checking in and petering out like every time we’d reconnected in the past, it became something else: more than it had ever been, even when we lived in the same city. I knew early on that something felt different, that something large was happening, but I still didn’t believe it. Every time there was a pause, I thought, well, joke’s on you, here we go again, back to my simple life. But suddenly, it wasn’t pausing anymore: we decided he’d come to New York, we’d make it real. And there he was. In my apartment. Our apartment. And now, my life was changing too.

It ended up only being our apartment for four or five months, we found the new place in April. Those who knew my old apartment are probably shocked that I was so ready to move. I was shocked, too. I loved my apartment in Ditmas, one big white living area, for the last year cascading with faux pink flowers and ivy, everything I loved on the walls and shelves ready to greet me and Artemis and anyone we had over. It was a decent building, there was a porch and a roof, Artemis was happy there. I’d sit amongst my blankets and make candle art or read or watch tv and think, this is it, this is the life, I’m lucky. I’m alone but I’m lucky.

So much happened there. I lived with Sebi and Hanna for a year, the best roommates I’ve ever had, I joked that we were a throuple but we really were the closest to a family I’ve had in a housing situation. I worked at King Mother, I felt like I was a part of the neighborhood. I threw endless parties, proud to be able to call the place mine every time a new person entered and gawked at the space.

But I was also growing up, in the way you still are in the background of everything despite being in your mid-thirties. And I now know that part of that process is realizing when it’s time to grow … elsewhere.

Things happened quickly this spring to make me see it was time to move on. Artemis was falling down those open stairs more and more often. A psycho neighbor started harassing my boyfriend (said psycho neighbor is a freelance writer and an acquaintance in PR got me the deets on him … you’ve made the wrong fellow freelance writer enemy …) But most importantly, I was browsing Streeteasy one day to see what the inventory was like, and I found it. I found our next home.

We went to see the apartment, and that was that. The second floor of a house, 20 minutes deeper into Brooklyn. A sun room, three adjoining living spaces with original wooden moldings, inlaid mirrors and built-in cabinets. A real, separate kitchen, still small, but not just shoved into the corner of a living space as an afterthought. I applied the next day, and within the week, we got the apartment.

I can’t believe something like this happened to me in New York. Every time I’d gotten a room or an apartment in the past, well, the process was just like it was for everyone in the history of the city: hellish, inhumane, horrifying. Traversing the city at the whim of realtors (“Are you available in an hour?”) for weeks on end, walking into apartments so small and strangely laid out that you’d wonder if it was just a prop-apartment, made to trick people into signing mediocre leases because they’ve seen just how low it can go.

I usually found decent, or in some cases even very special, apartments after weeks-months of looking, but it always ended up like a full-time job, or ending in a place that I felt rushed into that quickly became apparent why I should have considered more. I’ve had three apartments I loved during my decade in New York, two that were decent, and one that was awful, which I think somehow still makes me lucky in the grand scheme of the city. But nothing ever happened like this: the first place I saw, so smooth, so seamless.

The moving guys came three days before it was time to go to Redlands. They hated me about as much as moving guys always hate me, but slightly less because we were leaving a little bit behind in the apartment so my dad could stay there with Artemis for a few weeks while she got ear surgery. We unloaded at the new apartment, over the next two days my sister and cousins and a few friends came to see it, and then? I was on a plane to California.

Again, I wouldn’t have planned it this way. I wanted to settle in. I craved settling in! Unpacking and nesting and helping Artemis feel comfortable and building a home with my boyfriend instead of inviting him into my already-stuffed home and hoping for the best. But it was all already in place, there was nothing to change or say no to. Off I went.

When I was staying up all night before the morning I left for Redlands (don’t worry about it, just a thing I do for early flights …) I realized how grateful I was that the place I was going for a month was not only a place I love, but a place I’m absolutely comfortable. My nerves were frayed from the move, the impending dog surgery, various other factors; most of the time going to spend a month somewhere in this state is a nightmare. But Redlands is my dream, so it was the opposite. I knew I could relax the moment the plane took off: not mentally, it wasn’t a vacation, I would be working within 20 hours of the plane landing. But I could relax my nervous system; Redlands was not unknown territory. It was a place my body recognized as safe.

Probably very few people are this comfortable in their college town, but what can I say, Redlands is special and so am I. So there was really no better place to be going when I was so haphazard and dysregulated. I was going to the most comforting place in the world: the past.

I was invited back to Johnston to teach a May Term class about being a writer. I loved my education, but I never really felt like I got much in the way of, uh, hard-knocks preparation, so I wanted to give whatever students signed up for my class the experience that I think would have helped me prepare for this life, thirteen years ago. I’m really proud of the class I designed and what I taught my students; my relationships with them and what they taught me. An exploration of my syllabus and what we did together is coming in the next few posts, so I won’t go too long on it here, but suffice to say: with a few small exceptions, it went basically exactly as I wanted it to.

I think the universe said: she’s got a lot of balls in the air, she’s working hard, let’s let her enjoy the experience. In so many ways, Redlands was as it always has been: boozy dinners at the Tartan, overheated walks around campus, astonishment at how so much time has gone by and also none at all. Endless conversations with people who have known me since I was 18, watched me go from a truly disordered literal teenager to a less-disordered confident 22-year old making the campus my kingdom to a lost and bemused IHOP waitress to, from afar, a somewhat functional artist in the world. Just a glance upward to the beautiful mountains, omnipresent and enveloping.

But even Redlands can’t escape the winds of change. My May in Redlands was the last month of Johnston’s residence in the building that has been the heart of the program for over forty years, Bekins Hall, the oldest on the Redlands campus. An endless CVS receipt of structural issues, flooding, un-met earthquake regulations, you name it, plus some inner-politics that I was endlessly regaled with but mercifully except from developing an actual opinion on.

How did it just so happen that I was there for the last month of Bekins? I had a temporary office, I ended up being one of the last people working in a building that has housed students and professors for decades in hte place that gave me my academic and artistic life. Luck, chance, hazard. Whatever it is, I’ll take it.

I found myself ferreting away odds and ends that others were giving up in the inevitable purge of a move or a shutdown: psychology books left from a retiring professor who’d already moved out to spend the month in Salzburg, a clock commemorating Julie teaching 20 years at Redlands, a copy of Encountering Disgrace, the anthology built from an alumni course the year before I started my freshman year, a buffalo mug.

Teaching writing excited and reinvigorated my own relationship with the process. I found myself wanting to pause and start new projects based on the readings I was assigning; take breaks to put what was happening to me into my novel. But of course, I’m in one of those seasons of life where ideas are plentiful but time to execute them is scarce. I couldn’t drop everything to focus on getting back to my own process, because I was there for the students. My free time went to them, to class preparation, and to spending time with my professors and the program. I was forced to relegate my ideas to iPhone notes and the promise that I’d nurture them when I finally returned to my peaceful home. (Ideally, this is the start of that return :)

But then, the guilt! How dare I yearn for my peaceful return home when I was in the middle of an opportunity I’d always wanted, teaching at my alma mater?! Is that the scent of a woman not appreciating her incredible life?! But of course, I have space for all of those emotions. I enjoyed every minute of Redlands, just as I did when I was a student. I loved it all. Everything all at once. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t tired! Knocking on Kelly’s door, can you let me into Tim’s office to rest? Napping on the same couches I passed out on at 20, 21, 22 years old. What a gift. What a privilege.

I was only back in New York for ten days between Redlands and Paris. I did my best, but looking back, I can feel how little I was able to embody, how much I was just rushing to do as much as I could fit in. It’s not enough time to settle in in general, let alone to a new apartment. I wanted to be fully there for my boyfriend, who’d just spent his first month alone in New York, for my dog still recovering from ear surgery and missing me desperately as she always does when I’m gone, for my friends who were used to me as a constant presence. I did a little bit of all of it, but came up short in every regard.

And then Paris. Paris! I say the following NOT to garner a ‘poor me,’ but as way of explanation: I was basically working the whole time I was in Paris. The first weekend I hung out with friends, but from there it was running an alumni program for Johnston, immediately into working extra shifts at my main freelance gig for prime week, into my family arriving for my sister’s wedding in the south of France. Oh, all during a historic canicule. Which was … neat. But yeah, I’m not complaining, everything other than the heat wave was something that I either love and/or needed to do for money (looking at u, prime day shifts,) but it was not exactly a vacation.

Again, not complaining! Because that’s actually exactly what I want: to find opportunities to work in the places I love. And I loved it, almost every moment of it, except for the ones when I was delirious and becoming afraid for my life in the heat wave. Everyone on the alumni trip handled the heat so well, and also were just such amazing compatriots in general, once again reviving my inner flame of love for the Johnston Center and the brethren it’s produced — the alumni experience itself is too much to go into here, so she gets her own post as well in the coming weeks.

My skin was turning blotchy and painful, I was forgetting what I’d wanted to do a moment before. All food, my beloved French food, made me nauseous even looking at it. The others on the alumni trip all seemed to be faring better than me, or at least handling it better. I started to wonder: am I weaker than everyone? Am I unwell, beyond the heat? I tried to tell myself no, perhaps I’m just more sensitive, more attuned to my needs?!

Then I spent an afternoon at the hotel where most of the alumni were staying, bathed in sweet sweet air conditioning, and felt normal. Revived. And I realized. It was the heat, yes, but it was also the sweat lodge.

I was staying in a beautiful airbnb with Julie, her husband and kids, and a newer friend, Anthony, who has been working for Johnston for the past few years. It was a gorgeous three story house, like I’ve never seen or heard of in Paris. Winding staircases, a conservatory with a clear glass floor down to the living room, art books and antique furniture and endless corners for reading. But you know, the Parisians don’t believe in air conditioning. And Anthony and I were staying in the two rooms on the third floor. Mine had that attic style ceiling, directly under the tin roof. And … well, let’s just say that by the end of the week I started to think that it was maybe actually dangerous! My sweat lodge. My beautiful horrible sweat lodge.

The heat was supposed to break by the time my family arrived, but it didn’t. The hotel I had booked for us (yes, me, it was my fault) had air conditioning but … not good air conditioning. Not as scary as the sweat lodge, but not pleasant by any means. I had booked a room for myself with a bathtub right out in the open, and for this, I was grateful. I took a cold bath every day.

At least the heatwave introduced me to the beautiful experience of swimming in the Canal St. Martin — watching everyone channel their heatwave-induced psychosis into the most luminary swimming experience I’ve ever seen was almost worth it. Between that and the Seine swimming I did after the wedding, I actually have enough swimming thoughts to populate an entire post, so stay tuned my fellow swimmers.

Where the weather finally did break is in the south. I’m so grateful to my sister and her husband for throwing such an incredible event for themselves and all of us. It really was the best wedding I’ve ever been to, and I’m not just saying that because I’d be taken out back if I said otherwise. Bringing your loved ones together in such a beautiful secluded location is such a singular experience, and I know we’re so lucky to have had that time together as a family, but also getting to know the other people who make up my sister and her husband’s community.

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There’s something amazing but also broken about leaving your life for two months and coming back to it basically intact. I paused the movie for a little too long. When you start again, where were you? Should you start over? Everything was right where I left it. My boyfriend and dog healthy and happy and ready to see me and welcome me back into our little pod. All of my stuff just as un-moved into the apartment as when I left it, ready for me to lovingly place each treasured item in a new spot and throw away anything un-treasured and not already thrown away. All I want to do is it in the beautiful new house, staring at my sweeties and putting away my things.

Which is mostly what I’ve been doing, along with slowly reintroducing socializing into my diet, but the main thing I have to do is Work. As you might guess, two months away from home is disastrous for the bank account and credit cards. So I’m scheming, upping my freelance outreach and applying for whatever looks tenable and debating which potential income streams could be real and worth my time versus a waste of it. I still don’t feel like I have enough time to split between my boyfriend and my dog and my house and my friends and my writing and my work, but after two months of having nearly every moment accounted for, I do think I’m gaining a better sense of how to utilize the minutes of a day when they’re not already spoken for. At least I hope so! Check back in a few weeks to make sure I haven’t fallen back into my lost-time ways!

As mentioned, I’m drafting more Posts on various things I did during the trip: teaching, a weird fight I got into with this woman I met at my friends house about teaching, Redlands, Johnston, the passage of time, Johnston alumni, weddings, swimming … but if there’s anything specifically that you, my dear readers, are interested in hearing about, drop me a comment and I’ll make sure to include it in my upcoming missives!!!

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I might get some of this wrong, so bear with me. Two of the house-ers were dating, Ciara and West. They broke up. Timing? Unknown. Recent? She had a friend (Amanda) who was by her side through the trauma…or so she thought. That friend was married to someone else on the show…A Kyle. And now….there has been a bit of a wife swap, so to speak. After being spotted here and there in public, illicit wine bar dates and the like, Amanda and West are together…confirmed by create mode Instagram story. The internet is melting down, a la the Scandoval.

Even though this isn’t my franchise, there are a few random facts about the players that I’ve picked up over the years. Kyle and Amanda had (have? I’m not going to look up the status of the brand…) a spiked seltzer company called Loverboy. I have drank said hard seltzers in the past. Ciara was on the Traitors and had a viral moment when her and Boston Rob had their hands in a pile of spiders and he promised her they’d go to Emilio’s Balato. My friends and I were inspired by this and went to Emilo’s Balato. There’s a bit of real word ubiquity here, in the form of Products and Restaurants.

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I did have friends who were talking about this already in a group chat for a few days, but I was still living in my ‘ignore it if it’s not my francise’ bubble. IDK, once it hit twitter, something just snapped. I don’t think I’m going to go all-in on a Summer House watch or anything, but I shall be tracking the tweets, as I am wont to do.

Was Jon Hamm on WWHL part of my decision? Maybe, maybe not.

Me and whoever posted this are in basically the same position

The details in this tweet definitely got me more invested. ICU nurse? NYT op-ed? Okayyyy…..

everything is really NOT coming up Amanda I fear…

We did need something to unite over! That is the truth!

I don’t know if this chart is actually legible or not, but I appreciate the person who made it and am offering it to anyone who really wants to put in an effort to understand the relationships within this sordid affair…

If Rihanna is unfollowing you … brother, yikes …

And, apparently, this is not all! The drama is going worse and deeper! Maybe this strange man is actually fucking around with lots of women! I don’t have time to get that deep into it today, but for those interested, more details can be found in the tweets.

B/c….the gals are sleuthing. Praise the gals.

When one Scandoval memory-holes, another appears on the horizon

People are pulling out random receipts from long ago (February)

This Amanda woman is apparently already losing brand deals … yikes … fuck around and find out indeed…

If you are someone who decides to go back and watch the show because of this, well, there are some surprises to be found!

The ex husband didn’t know this was happening?! Amanda and West you two are dirty dogs…

I’m gonna be real though. My main thought amidst all this is … that guy?!

THIS is the man we are ruining friendships over?! GUYS! He looks like he took a shit on the floor of the dive bar we used to have political journalism drinks at!!! He also looked like someone I’ve also seen on TV recently, and you know who I realized it is?!

Yes, the Love is Blind guy who said that the doctor should be doing Pilates. Sigh. These red-faced red-boys do not deserve our time, our energy, certainly not our body parts. These two guys are basically the same, if you think about it, even beyond how they both look like the sun had an evil child it wanted to hide from the world. They both got one taste of spending time with a beautiful woman and decided, well, if she’s going to love me, maybe I can get MORE beautiful women to love me, and maybe I can do bad things and everyone will forgive me.

FALSE! The people of earth still have some sense!! These men will pay, pay with public humiliation, for thinking they can get fresh with so many women and still come out looking Cool. Not that they looked cool. They looked ugly, and idk why any of these women have ever given them the time of day.

Then again … people are simply not that in control of their emotions when it comes to love, attraction, etc, so like it’s pretty useless to question why people are doing a thing. Why is someone upset? Love is upsetting! OTOH, the corollary is that it’s totally fine to look agog.

But, after grieving period, it will indeed be time for a reality check. Ciara looks like a skincare ad, Amanda looks like she got her face slammed between two sides of a large book. And if you’re wondering about my inner moral compass, it says yes, you can make fun of how people look if they publicly act horribly towards their friends. That’s just the rules.

Ciara will prevail. Crying outside of Hermes is chic. She’ll feel horrible for a while, but the image of her being sad outside of a Hermes is forever. And I mean that in a good way! People will recreate for years to come! Iconic place to melt down.

It’s finally here. Survivor 50. What has been keeping many of us alive and breathing through this horrifying winter, or, really, all of horrifying life. And you know what?! It delivered! I was scared. I am still scared of what could happen over the course of the season. But, from where we’re at now, I’m thrilled. I was eyes on the prize for all 3 hours. And … I think I like where this season is going.

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Survivor has always been about telling a story. The producers can’t control what happens (well…who knows…) but the editors have total control over the way what happened is portrayed before it hits TV. I actually think they are going pretty heavy handed with the edit this season, but hopefully that’s just because they care and not because they’re doing a total misdirect where the story they seem to be telling is actually a cover for the actual, lamer story.

In the pre-show discussion, there’s been a lot of fears about new era players massacring old school, which has happened on several returnee seasons in the past. But, I think from this early edit, we have a chance to keep some of our old boys around a little longer…possibly forever?! Though one old school player fell early (spoilers avoided till my super nerd out section later in the post,) three others are starting out strong with real narratives, focus on their character development and journey over the seasons, and just a plethora of moments. Give me the moments!! The moments is all I crave!!

I’m obsessed with watching the players interact across generations in bizarre combos. RizGod and Colby going from anti- to bromance in one episode. Charlie and Mike White skinny white boy alliance? Mike White immediately calling out Dee’s veneers? Ozzy and Q sleepover on Exile? COACH PUTTING A TOE RING ON CHARLIE?! Then Mike White starts crying about being successful. Why? I don’t care. I’ll take it.

Sure, there was some suspicion in this house of Jeff saying he just wanted fun, positive people for 50 … but, I started to see the vision. I’m charmed by Dee saying she loves the leaves they use to wipe their butts.

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I like how there’s this interesting mix of ‘looking back over the eras in a way that is meaningful and profound,’ and ‘honoring the eras in a way that makes no sense.’ Like why, out of all the seasons, do we have so much South Pacific callback and reference? That is certainly not accurate to where it looms in the communal mind. Is it just because Ozzy/Coach is the only rivalry they could cook up with who was willing to come play? And yet. And yet! Do I really have anything to complain about since the way it manifested is Ozzy trying to make amends with Coach, Ozzy absolutely slaughterhouse-fiving all aspects of a challenge except fact that the end post was like two feet farther away than it should have been, and then Coach just snaking the key right out from under him to win the challenge in a not particularly slayer-esque manner, all while Q is simply … there, observing? No, I do not. I might just have to let them cook.

And that ends with Ozzy and Q having a sleepover on Exile Island? Honestly. Just give me more.

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Survivor needs to tell a story. Without the story of the season, Survivor is just people being miserable on an island. I think the question with this season is, how much is the storytelling going to jump the shark, and how much is it going to be appropriate for the magnitude of the season? It’s walking a fine line, as is! There’s storylines I’m seeing develop that I like, but there’s also a non-zero number of moments where the editing is going … hard. Too hard. They’re pushing it. On the nose.

For instance! This Christian and Rick Devens thing. Like, I get it. It’s a narrator millennial cringe buddy comedy! Yas queen! But, obviously, I hate it. They’ve gone too far. If Penner was in the Rick Devens spot? I’d eat it up. Christian and Penner? I die. But no, they had to go for the guy who is just … well, his schtick is literally narrating Survivor like the news because he is/was an IRL newscaster. No subtlety for Giacomo?!

It’s like, the producers and editors almost get it. They almost have it. We get this amazing show of Christian making fire with his glasses, which is a perfect callback to Yau-Man being the first nerdy genius unexpected game killa in that early era. But then you literally have Rick look at the camera and go “Science is fun, kids!” No! No! Nobody wants to be hit over the head! We know that Jeff wants family friendly fun. But you don’t have to actually say it.

Then again, it might just horseshoe theory right over into Camp. Which I would, of course, accept, even applaud. Christian paraphrasing Joan Didion? If it’s intentional, I see you, I raise you, let’s go.

Meanwhile, in the parts of the storytelling that I love and will ride for, we see Ozzy and Cirie mending years worth of reality tv backstabbing drama and deciding to work together, melding their very different skill sets into an alliance that will ideally cut through the new era gamebot bullshit. I hope! This is what I want the season to be about! You absolutely can catch me with family friendly fun, if it’s our aging legends teaming up to finish one last job.

The story that I’m invested in: the passage of time. Colby decides that RizGod isn’t so bad after initially branding him as lazy. Love it. They have a bonding moment. RizGod…cries? Because Colby is 47, which is his … dad’s age? I don’t think his dad is sick or dying. But he’s crying. You see, I’ll accept it. Why? Okay, maybe we’re just seeing my preference for what is acceptable cheese and what is pushing the envelope. Or, maybe there is a very obvious difference between a man looking at a young dude who is the same age he was during his first season, deciding he’s not so bad after all, and said young man having an emotional moment about male role models, and … Rick Devens saying “Science is fun!”

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Immunity challenge? Tragic across the board. No challenges where people are sad about things they can’t do or where people get hurt! Both of those things are actually anti-family fun, Jeff. Give me the cow blood instead. Give me Sumo at Sea! I can’t watch Cirie feeling bad about herself! It’s not fair!

I know that Cila had to go to tribal council first and probably have a rough road ahead of them but … also … slay? Will Blood on the Clocktower be mentioned on network TV because of Christian and Emily? If it isn’t, it will be erasure, if it is, I will get a BOTC tattoo. Ozzy is Shambo? But Good Shambo? Shambo With Advantages? Legoooo.

Cirie and Ozzy are still in danger, but they’re working together, Ozzy has advantages, and both of them are getting major character development edits. And Colby! He’s flirting! He’s winking! He’s being a good sport! His major pratfall in HvV! My three kings! Stay with me! I might be proven wrong, but my heart hopes that early boots wouldn’t get this kind of development treatment.

NOW I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT BOOTS AND PREDICTIONS … SO FEEL FREE TO STOP NOW IF U SO CHOOSE….

Jenna. Dear Jenna. I was rooting for her! I really wanted to see her slammajamma! But, alas. She tanked it. Nobody asked her to target Cirie. Shoot for the queen, you best not miss! I can’t even be sad to see her go if that was the way she was going to play. Also, why did she get a voice transplant? Also, she just wasn’t being a cool hang. I really think that you have to be a cool hang at least the first 7 days of Survivor. It’s like the first days of camp. Tough but true!

Kyle Medevac…rough. But. A dramatic medevac is frankly old school. Although, I feel like they tried to milk this one too hard. Give me Russell Swann almost DYING. Give me James the Gravedigger agreeing to leave because he NEEDS HIS HANDS TO DIG THE GRAVES. I see what they tried to do. I appreciate it. Landing not stuck, but effort noted.

Keep an eye on Chaos Kass on twitter, she’s going off and I’m sat.

Streets are saying that Colby alliance is screwed since they’re down two votes but … I don’t know. Streets aren’t counting RizGod as part of the alliance, which I think he is — or at least he has shown no allegiance to those not in the alliance (Aubry/Angelina,) and I see no reason for him to vote w/ the double A’s instead of his new dad Colby. I think (and hope) Aubry is gonna go.

On that note, here’s my breakdown of what I think everyone’s roles are and how it’ll play out.

THERE’S A STORY, THEY’LL GO FAR: established as characters with a storyline that either follows the eras of Survivor or the ways in which their life outside reflects a story the show likes telling.

Ozzy: Boy to man. Redemption. Challenge beast —> learning to work with people. Golden jungle boy grows up. Scandal redemption.

Cirie: The final boss of getting up off the couch.

Colby: America’s (boy) sweetheart, coming back to avenge his jaded years. He’s now a role model, but he’s still got it with the ladies.

Christian: The inheritor of worlds, the nerd who learned to play with the big boys has a child to pass on his legacy.

DEEP RUN, COMIC RELIEF, NARRATORS: Survivor is a story, and a story needs narrators. They usually don’t turn out to be winners, but it’s good when they’re around for a deep run.

Rick: Obvious … the whole newscaster thing … again on the nose, but maybe the people need their hands held.

Emily: Online GalPal. Hermione energy. (Sorry…) She’s a nerd, but knows what’s up. That whole thing.

Q: more comic relief than narrator……but….these categories are fluid. His threat level is down, I think, so he stands to hang tight and reflect the insanity back on us.

Mike White: Duh.

VILLIAN EDIT (MED RUN): Jeff has been vocally anti-villian as of late. I think this means we get villains, but one will be an early boot and one will be an early post-merge boot.

Coach: Mike White already called him out for playing WITHOUT honor and integrity? I think he’s set up for basically repeating his Tocantins game.

Aubry: they show her being mean to Genevieve and barely anything else?! Oh she’s toast.

WRONSKI FEINT: Alright, I think that they’re setting this up as a baller girl group to root for, but it’ll be an easy distraction of them getting dismantled in the pre-merge. Or, maybe the rest of their tribe won't get it together and they’ll make a post-merge run. Either way, I don’t see them as real threats.

Dee,Kamilla,&Tiffany

PASSING OF THE TORCH: Screentime and building relationships with old schoolers, they’ll be gone once they’ve served that purpose.

Savannah&RizGod

????: I don’t have these guys place in the narrative figured out yet. Excited to find out!

Joe, Genevieve, Stephanie, Jonathan, and Chrissy.

PURPLED: Sorry! Hope I’m wrong!

Charlie & Angelina

(Hope I’m wrong re: Charlie. I actually don’t care for Angelina.)

What do YOU think of my predictions? Down to CLOWN in the comments.

An internet-turned-IRL friend of mine wrote a chapbook, and of course we had to talk about it. Natural Wine, by Jo Barchi, is a collage-poem built from two years of shift notes, overheard preshift chatter, menu tests, lies told to tables, and the very specific syntax of restaurant life. I have a very special place in my heart for writing by service industry workers. Back when I was deep in my serving days, I was always half-aware that something strange and theatrical was happening around me — that the restaurant was a kind of stage, that the language was its own genre, that the ingredients and processes we rattled off had their own poetry. I knew I would love Natural Wine because I love Jo’s writing, but what I didn’t expect was how precisely it would capture that feeling: the sense that the found language buzzing around your head during a shift could be rearranged into art.

If I’d had a book like this when I was twenty-three and triple-sat on a Saturday night, it probably would have blown my head off. Not because it romanticizes service work — it absolutely does not — but because it treats it as material. As structure. As form. The chapbook grew out of Jo’s frustration with writing sonnets and a poet friend’s suggestion that the only lines that felt alive were the ones pulled straight from the restaurant. What emerged is pastiche in the best sense: a poem built from shift notebooks and preshift scraps, from ramp season horniness and “play the tables like a harmonica” bravado. In our conversation, we talk about the restaurant as improv theater, about saying insane things to tables and getting away with it, about the ethics of being “bad” at your job, about lying as both survival tactic and performance strategy. We also tragically accept that the restaurant is always two years behind the internet and one year ahead of it.

Bougie ingredients are beloved far beyond the dining room. The libidinal ecstasy of ramps. The bitter radicchio salad in winter. The fantasy of access, brilliance, criminal genius — projected onto onions. But what Jo’s book does, and what this conversation circles, is separate the pleasure from the delusion. There may be no such thing as an ethical restaurant, but there is such a thing as competence, chill, and the correct amount of ease. There is such a thing as turning labor into language without making it your whole personality.

For the next 30–45 (time is fake) days, a portion of new paid subscriptions will be donated to Salt Cure in Minneapolis, a restaurant community fund — which feels like the right place to start, and end, a conversation about serving culture.

RS: Right from the jump, you work in ingredients and processes that will be familiar to anyone who frequents fancy restaurants, either as a patron or a worker, or really anyone who is interested in the bougie food scene. Does writing out ingredients and processes and integrating them into your writing have any relationship to the writing process itself for you? Or is that a ridiculous question?

JB: Not a ridiculous question at all, but I do have a long winded answer for it. About two years ago I was trying to write sonnets and could not for the life of me make them work. They were dull and aping the syntax and style of other poets I had read in an attempt to teach myself to write sonnets (mainly Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer). None of the sonnets worked for me, they all sounded wrong and I couldn’t figure out the structure to save my life. My friend Kay Gabriel pointed out that the only thing really working about the sonnets was my use of restaurant language, the things I say and the things I overhear. I had about thirty pages of notes and failed sonnets laying around from my time experimenting and that’s what makes up the poem. It’s all the little notes I took in my shift notebook, at preshift and during shifts for two years.

RS: How did you react when she said that? Were you ready to jump into the restaurant as poem or did you have some hesitation?

JB: Not to make myself sound like a sycophant, but I pretty much am always down to try something if Kay suggests it. I was a little scared of writing something corny, or something like The Bear. I wanted it to sound like me and not like your annoying friend who makes their job their whole personality. I also wanted to try something new, so this felt like a fun challenge to not rely on what I feel like I’m always writing about (love and music).

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RS: I’ve always felt that waiting tables had some element of improvisational theater to it, especially during consistently busy shifts – the scaffolding of every day/night is the same, but what happens within that scaffolding can be totally unpredictable. I was reminded of this while reading! Does that idea resonate at all within your experience?

JB: This is the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me, but it’s true. Serving is mostly improv theater. It’s mostly theater in general! I find this really embarrassing because I’m very good at serving. I love saying insane shit to a table (“I’m so fertile right now.” “Anytime someone’s cheated on their partner with me, it’s been my fault.”) because I’m too busy and too frazzled to censor myself. And they love it too. That’s kind of the secret to being a good server, I think. Lying until it’s time to tell the truth and then just letting it fly. Well, that and the ability to be fast.

RS: HA. I mean, I hate stand-up, improv, sketch, the whole lot, so I get it. But I’m open to the structures, and where they resonate in life. I also loved saying insane shit to tables, and watching how it worked so well, until sometimes, it didn’t, and I’d just laugh. It made me both popular and extremely unpopular – like what the hell are you doing, but also LOL.

I agree with the things that you said make a good server, but I’d add ‘being chill.’ In the sense of like, I’d get in trouble for being too zen and not freaking out when it was busy, because my bosses thought I wasn’t taking the busyness seriously, but I was like hey, I don’t look stressed, which makes the customers feel more relaxed, and these people who are running around freaking out aren’t actually making their tables feel good. That anxiety translates. What about your demeanor do you think resonates with your tables?

JB: Oh I think you absolutely can’t take it too seriously, which to me is the key to staying chill. Oh no, that table got their app before their drinks… I don’t care! I think it’s important to be able to pretend to care while communicating with a table, but if everything is crashing, the restaurant is busy, things are a mess, everyone is melting down, I simply have to remember none of this has anything to do with me. I am going to leave this restaurant at the end of my shift and go home to my food and my books and my friends. I relate a lot to what you’re saying, that in chaos I’m still moving and still visibly doing things for tables, but I’m not freaking out or looking like I can’t complete my task. I think that’s the secret actually, making it look the correct amount of easy. People want to know you’re doing something hard for them, but not that you’re going to kill yourself. I think it makes people feel taken care of.

RS: ‘You can be as bad as you want’ - I know what this means for me in the service context, what does it mean for you?

JB: I’m trying to come up with a diplomatic answer to this because I do think giving bad service is sort of everyone’s god given right. That being said, nothing pisses me off more than when people are bad at their job in a way that makes their coworkers work more. I find it so insulting to expect other people to pick up the slack because you want to fuck off. I’m also coming at this from a tip pool mentality. I like to think I have patience and compassion (famous last words) but truly something I can’t abide is someone not helping their tables, not knowing the menu, never running food or drinks, never pre-busing or bussing their own tables. I find it really disgusting frankly. I love being bad at my job, any job I’ve ever had, in a way that doesn’t make more work for other people. Standing in the back on my phone? That’s sacred to me! I simply make sure that before I do that, my tables are taken care of, and that if they flag down one of my coworkers, it’s because they refused to be helped by me when I tried half a dozen times, not because I was nowhere to be found!

RS: I think that’s really accurate and fair. I’ve been guilty in my day of forgetting to pre-bus because I just felt like doing other things and looking back on it, I do actually feel bad, because now when I’m eating out I really notice things like that and I’m like lol, yikes. What do you notice when you’re eating out as a patron that makes your skin crawl?

JB: I feel like my awareness transfers to myself and my friends. I’m always on edge for someone to do something that would annoy me as a server. One of us orders for the table, we are ready, we know what we want to eat, we don’t ask stupid questions. I’m passionate about making the interaction as smooth and normal as possible. Honestly a thing that sometimes bothers me as a guest is an overly involved server. I don’t want to talk to my server all night, I want to talk to the people I’m with. It makes my skin crawl when someone tries to insert themselves into my life via over familiarity.

RS: Does a part of you love the fancy vegetables? Or do you hate it all?

JB: Unfortunately, I love fancy vegetables. I love ramp season and farm to table bullshit. I pretty firmly believe that there’s no such thing as an ethical restaurant, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something that they’ve tricked themselves into believing. That being said… I love going out to dinner or lunch and eating a seasonal salad… maybe even a bitter radicchio salad in the winter… yum!!!

RS: ‘Play the tables like a harmonica.’ Okay, bring me in, bring us in. How do you do it? What’s your playbook?

JB: I genuinely wish I had an answer to this. I have a few things I say to people regularly, but most of what I’m doing is just lying. Some of the things I say to tables are like. Asking them for an autograph when they sign the check, or when someone does the whole “WE HATED IT HA HA HA” bit while I clear plates that are completely empty I deadpan “It’s embarrassing to serve it.” those always get a laugh or some sort of engagement. That’s kind of the way I play it I guess, engagement bait, but not too much. I can’t spend my whole night talking to one table, so I have to be able to get in, joke, and get the fuck out.

RS: “Ramp season really is chefs ovulating.” Can you riff on that for a sec?

JB: I’ve never seen chefs hornier than when they talk about ramps. Have you seen them when they start to pull the bulbs off and pickle them? They have this look of ecstasy. There’s this way of speaking, like they are getting away with something. They have the secret hook up. They have access to something no one else does. It’s this whole libidinal thing. They get to feel like criminals and like geniuses. I think it’s pretty normal but also one of the funniest things in the world. They are just fucking onions. Delicious, sure. They act like pigs finding truffles in shit.

RS: LOL. God, so true. And like, we got them, we got more than that restaurant, look what we did with them, tee-hee. Do you have any analogues for restaurant culture in internet writing right now?

JB: I think it’s probably contrarians, like. Ha Ha, I found something secretly problematic or stupid about a thing you all love! Which is relatable sadly. I often can’t understand, or can understand but am still annoyed, by something people love. I think the difference for me is that I don’t enjoy this state. I think there is something kind of spiritually sick about chefs who are addicted to their own supposed brilliance, and writers who think they are geniuses because they know more about form and art than like, a goodreads influencer. I think something everyone who writes for the internet could stand to be a bit better about is figuring out who actually is deserving of scorn, instead of, say, writing an entire essay in response to one tweet from someone who has 2,000 twitter followers and no real influence.

RS: Is the restaurant in sync with the trends of the internet? Not in terms of food – well, yes, in terms of food, that’s a question, but also, I notice you mentioning things that are popular in online speak right now – do you notice that reflected at work? Your restaurant? Restaurants in general? But also the food question. Does the restaurant reflect the food trends of the internet?

JB: This is a really smart question and the only real answer I have is that every restaurant is simultaneously 2 years behind the internet, and 1 year ahead of the internet. It varies day by day, restaurant by restaurant.

RS: Do you have good or bad knife skills?

JB: I have horrible knife skills. I just became decent at dicing an onion this week. It’s one of the many reasons I could never work in back of house in a real way!

RS: I’m really working on my knife skills, but it’s like…hard. I actually took a class once and I did learn a lot but alas mostly only realized how much more I have to learn. But I think I’m ready for knife skills level II at least. Do you take pride in cooking at home?

JB: I don’t know if I take pride in cooking at home, I’m certainly a better home cook than a lot of people, but mostly I’m just winging it. I think it’s less a pride thing, and more that I take on a great amount of shame for eating out when it’s not like a fun or special occasion.

RS: Where do you find room for more service industry work among writers? Do you? I noticed when I wrote Bad Waitress that everyone was very enthusiastic about it but no one was particularly keen to actually gather more work from me, or anyone in our ilk.

JB: This is the first thing I’ve written about working service, and it’s somewhat recently out so I can’t really speak to this with any authority. I will say that people don’t really talk about Sweetbitter as a novel about service, mainly they talk about it as a novel that made its author a lot of money. I think there’s room for it everywhere, I just hope the money catches up.

RS: ‘Everday a new ugliestsentenceyet.’ This is of course true of internet writing and modern publishing as much as it is in the restaurant. What are the ugliest sentences you’ve read recently? And if you don’t want to read anyone for filth, just a trend or generic example is fine.

JB: I think almost all nonfiction online now falls into the category of that one tweet about how hard journalists work to write a sentence like “food is amazing not only because of the taste but also the flavor.” So many writers have decided that the only way to write now is by laying out something that’s happened to them, and then telling you exactly how they felt and how you, the reader, should feel about what they’ve said. They want to be “unlikable” in a controlled way. I find this pretty hideous, both morally and on the page. Grow up and let people experience your writing like an adult!

RS: Do you worry about your employers/coworkers finding your writing, or are you just like, whatever? I go back and forth. For a minute when I wrote about the US open I thought my staffing company was going to find it and fire me but like, of course no one noticed. Which is what I told myself would happen but it’s still funny to have the anxiety and then remember that no one cares.

JB: I kind of don’t consider the consequences of anything I’ve ever written until the day it’s published, or sometimes not until someone comments on a particular line and then I’m forced to kind of go “oh, huh. You now know that about me. Well! Guess that’s the way it is!” I was pretty worried I might get fired for writing Natural Wine, in that it’s so specifically about where I work, or that it might ruffle feathers. But so far my GM, and several coworkers, have all read it and loved it! To your point, I usually have found that people don’t care, or are happy to be thought of, or effusive about what I have written! It’s nice to forget and remember in equal measures the limits and capacity other people have for caring about what I have to say.

RS: Let’s talk about menu tests. True that they’re mostly done once and then never brought up again or really regarded in any way. But at the same time, when I’m eating out and ask a question and someone doesn’t know the answer, I do get a little prickly because studying the menu is always something I took pretty seriously, or at least tried to. Like, of course I said ‘Wow what a great question, let me go talk to the chef,’ plenty of times, because you just can’t know everything, but at the same time, I do think it’s good to Care and Do Your Best.

JB: I used to work for an ice cream company for about four years that required us to memorize truly ridiculous amounts of information about each flavor. Like, this flavor is inspired by a Scandinavian candy that was Roald Dahl’s favorite, Roald Dahl was our founder’s favorite author, here is an indepth process for how that candy is made traditionally, here is how we recreate it, and this is how popular this flavor is. We would take all of that information and turn it into a sentence or two, something you could say easily while handing someone a sample of the flavor. It was a part of how service functioned at that job. Ever since that job, I find it very easy to remember and translate a lot of information into bite size sentences for tables to understand. I’m also lucky to work in a restaurant where I’m not really grilled by tables, or expected by tables to give them a sort of fine dining explanation of every item they could possibly come into contact with. I think knowing the menu and ingredients and allergens is pretty much the bare minimum of my job as a server, and is also incredibly easy. Or to put it another way: you can make your job easier or more difficult depending on your own willingness to do some pretty simple things. I find it easier to know things about the menu than to have to constantly ask other people or look like an idiot in front of a table. Competence feels good not because I want to be the best server ever, but because when I’m good at my job, it’s significantly easier to do my job!

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RS: Who is really doing it in poetry right now? I am always interested in reading more poetry, but I just end up going back to the 3-4 people I like, dead people like Anne Sexton and live but well-trodden people like Chelsey Minnis.

JB: Oh god, okay but I’m going to forget people. I’m always going back to Rainer Diana Hamilton and Bernadette Mayer. Lately I’ve had a lot of fun reading a ton of John Ashbery and James Schuyler. I had a very New York School year last year. Other poets I pay a lot of attention to are Alexis Almeida, John Keene, Violet Spurlock, and I adored Farnoosh Fathi’s book Granny Cloud. I’m always thrilled whenever Caroline Rayner publishes anything! Oh and you of course can’t go wrong with any chapbook published by Spiral Editions!

RS: You’ve been with Joyland for a while now. How are you feeling about your balance of service work, editing with Joyland, writing, and whatever other projects you’re percolating? Both in a daily sense, and in a grander life sense.

JB: I have been! I’ve been at Joyland since 2020, and have loved every second of it. I’m lucky it doesn’t feel like work to edit other people’s work in any way except that it takes up my time. How I feel about the balance in my life changes about every eight hours. When I’m reading plenty, when I’m on top of my Joyland email and doing what I’m supposed to be doing there, when I’m stealing away moments at my serving job to write down lines, when I’m getting laid (regularly and well), when I’m seeing my friends, when I’m making time to remain grounded and actually feed the passions I have, I feel incredibly balanced. I think for me the secret to actually remaining balanced is to treat serving as a place and time that I expand social energy. It’s not the only place I use that social energy, I make sure I’m using it with and on the people I love in a different and much more fun way. So when I leave work I’m not really that burned out, all I did was run around and talk. I have plenty of space in my brain for thoughts about things I actually care about. I think sobriety helps this also, I don’t really care much about wine or beer or the processes that create either of them. I know a lot about both of those things, sure, but at the end of the day I care a lot more about why I liked someone’s manuscript or why I didn’t. I wish I was better at developing routines, but there’s always time to learn.

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When I first heard about it I was very confused, because I was imagining a building that was just like, straight up glass no ledges. So you can imagine my confusion. Lizard hands or some such? I didn’t figure out that the building had actually quite a few ledges until like, I caught a glimpse of the broadcast, so … hard to say what was going on in my brain in the intervening 24 hours.

I want to be clear that I had no idea this was happening nary a week ago. At some point my boyfriend started talking about it and I was like … well, what are you talking about. He began to explain, I began to get confused thinking it was a very smooth glass building … et cetera. Not important. Just orienting us to my brainscape.

On the morning of my birthday, I was napping and said boyfriend was doing the dishes and he put on Free Solo, Alex’s first documentary about free-soloing El Cap in Yosemite. When I woke up, he said we could turn it off, but I was like no … this is fine … all I want to do is rest until we go out later … may as well rest to the dulcet tones of a climbing documentary … I mean … I absolutely do not want to spend time with this man. But I’m plenty interested in watching him!

What can I say, I went to college with a bunch of weird outdoorsy people. I even had crushes on some of them. They weren’t like, my primary group of friends, but they were people I enjoyed partying with. In fact I would say the less psychotic outdoorsy freaks were maybe one of my favorite groups of people to party with! I don’t think the psychotic ones really partied, they were too busy climbing and camping and whatever. Wouldn’t be surprised if one of them has met ‘ole Alex.

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Anyway, I liked the documentary. Watching a freak at work, what could be better? Scary, but who cares, I’m sitting at home. I often thought while watching of one of my favorite things to say: “When people ask if I’d rather go to the bottom of the ocean or the moon, I say I’d rather stay at home.” I cannot imagine anything for the entire rest of my life that would possess me to climb even ten feet without any sort of safety gear, let alone 3,000. This sort of thing simply does not appeal to me. But that’s what makes it enjoyable to watch, I suppose. Like, sure, the nature and stuff is cool, but I’m really like … wow this is simply a different breed of human than me.

And then there’s his girlfriend, whose name is literally Sanni McCandless, and I was like … is this a joke?! Is his girlfriend related to Chris McCandless, famous uber-prototype of psychotic outdoors guy? But no, luckily, they’re not related, the world manages to not go that far today. But, in Googling this, I did find out that she is a life coach which is … somehow not surprising. I personally wouldn’t be coaching anyone if my own life choice was to relentlessly pursue this man, but … to each their own.​​

(Apparently, she went to an event of his and slipped him her phone number. I mean, fine, we’ve all been there. But he was like, not super into dating – like he’d date people but would say ‘oh, if I died, they’d be fine, they’d move on’ – you know … THAT SORT OF THING … and it seems like this girl just like, kept at it and decided not to care about how cavalier he was about his relationships. On the one hand I’m like this is upsetting, but on the other hand I’m like well we do all know how rough it is out there? Whatever. I’ll speak of it more.)

Anyway as we’re watching I’m discussing all this with my boyfriend, (all this being everything going on in the documentary, not Sanni’s questionable decisions, although actually yeah we discussed that as well,) and I learn from him that not only is it like certainly possible that Honnold could die – that MOST FREE SOLO-ERS HAVE DIED. ON CLIMBS. LIKE IT’S THE MAIN WAY THEY DIE. THEY USUALLY END UP DYING EVENTUALLY.

Sorry for the capitals, but like ... what other thing can we really say that for? Oh this thing that people are famous for also kills them. Maybe there’s something obvious I’m forgetting but it feels very uncommon!

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Many of the questions that one has about Honnold are at least attempted to be answered in the original documentary. The producers et al spend a considerable amount of time talking about the ethics of filming a guy they know and like, in some cases a friend, do something where he might die. They talk to his mom and she says, of his dead father, ‘well, these days, they might say he had Asperger’s…’ and … good for her for just saying it. Meanwhile, he’s carving pumpkins with another rock climber’s children, and he’s like ‘I actually can’t smile or be enthused while doing this because it just seems stupid.’ (Or something along those lines.)

I started shitting on him for saying this, like, sometimes you just have to force yourself to pretend to enjoy things in front of children, but then I remembered that I too famously talk shit on holidays … holiday decorations (why? They look tacky and you just have to take them back down.) Time off for holidays (bourgeoise! Embarrassing to make a big deal out of! Can’t we think of the service workers!) Traveling home for every holiday (what are you, ten?) … you get the picture.

Well, whatever. At least I do that in the privacy of my own home (and/or this public internet post) and not while someone else’s children are trying to enjoy a holiday tradition. (I actually don’t even like carving pumpkins. The pumpkin is too thick. The knife hurts to carve with. Ahhh. My credibility crumbles.)

Anyway, spoiler alert, he does not die, he free-solos El Cap and it truly is very impressive. Sometimes the crew have to look away because they definitely think he’s going to fall. But he doesn’t! What a feat.

As I am wont to do, I attached to this whole thing and brought it up to everyone at my birthday dinner, especially because now he was about to start climbing the building. This led to my cousin and sister watching at the table. I love being a trendsetter, even if the trend is bringing up something that is already being broadcast to millions of people.

We had many a thought … like … is Taipei itself the sponsor? Is this a giant tourism grift? But if it was, that would be okay because we support Taiwan?

Then of course once I was enmeshed it started showing up all over my timeline. You know how that goes. And who am I if not a person who loves debating back and forth with the people of the timeline.

Is it, though? Sometimes I feel like we’re so busy anticipating that soon there will be a Running Man / Squid Games / death on tv extravaganza that we’re actually not distinguishing between what is sinister and what is just a guy doing a thing he wants to do. Not everything is the portal to The Most Dangerous Game But On TV.

I maintain that I personally don’t want to hang out with him but … here I am beginning to like his attitude … like cool man, whatever. Just listen to (mostly) Tool and climb that building. “It’s a random playlist that I made.” Is he me?!

This does start to get interesting! As mentioned, I thought he was crazy at first for doing all this with a family and kids but … well, let’s think. Like sure, the above is giving autism, but also … is he wrong? This is life and shit does happen!

And then we get into the debate of how risky it actually was for him vs. just how risky it looks to a normal non-climber person. Even just between the El Cap and the building, it’s like extremely obvious how much more dangerous El Cap is.

Now here is where I start to perk up my little ears and put on the old thinking cap. Not to be a total New Yorker about it but … cars!! Driving is so dangerous! And people do it every day while texting and high and in horrible weather. Everyone shrugs it off like ‘well that’s the cost of doing business’ but … idk. Is it?!!?

The tweets follow my thought process as I go from thinking that this guy sucks to thinking … but what if he does not suck. I’m not even that into sports but like, somebody benign the most fit and best at something … I may simply have to hand it to him!

Yep, here I am, beginning to think this guy and I have more in common than I think. “Sick.” Indeed! What I would say.

It’s kind of like a Survivor challenge in this way. You’ll see certain challenges (or I will) and I’ll think oh, I could probably do that for a while, I mean, I’d just daydream. But then you hear Jeff saying – ‘the most important thing in this challenge is concentration. If you lose it for even a second, you’re out.’ and I’m like oh lol, couldn’t do any of that. Love it for people who can! Maybe I’ll get a few minutes of concentration someday soon!

Genuinely, reading tweets like this really helped me conceptualize and understand what was actually happening with the risk here. I started to even feel bad for judging him for having kids and stuff.

At this point, I’m this guy.

Again, me? Will always choose staying at home over pretty much anything, certainly something adventurous. But I’m coming around. I’m now thankful that these people exist, knowing I will never be one of them.

Ok idk about the brain damage now that I’ve transitioned to Fan but I do think this is an interesting argument. Like she’s a cute girl, she def could have married a normal guy who just wants to go on a tiring hike once in a while. She chose this life! He’s not doing anything that she didn’t know going in was going to be part of the bargain!

Ok it’s giving Coach on survivor but I am nonetheless inspired. Unfortunately this gets at a huge discrepancy in my life….must think long and hard in the coming months. I love being safe and at home, but I also love (the idea of) being a warrior, although my idea of being a warrior is certainly more intellectual, emotional, artistic, than his. I guess a little bit physical, but more in a ‘wow I’m swimming once a week I am a warrior of lifetime fitness’ than … anything remotely dangerous or challenging. But it’s the mindset, you know? This is your path, and you’ll pursue it with excellence? I really can’t argue.

I mean … that’s really all there is! This is where he and I intersect! Being insanely serious about some things but also just kind of not caring about stuff. Ugh. Hate to find common ground. Ultimately, I must support a man who just wants to be the best at the thing he’s obsessed with and doesn’t really give a fuck about anything else.

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Anyway, here we are. Q4ish online, revisited. So we can say goodbye forever!

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If it is a certainty that a year will be bad, it is an equal certainty that Trump will say something hilarious.

Similar timing in Trumpland:

The New York Mayoral race raged on … sort of.

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Jia Tolentino’s newest venture … AIRBNB SPONCON!! The people were displeased.

LOUVRE HEIST! LOUVRE HEIST! FOR A MOMENT THINGS ARE FUN!

Lily Allen ~ ends ~ the open relationship (I hope!!) with West End Girl. I actually have more to say about this in the coming year. You’ll see!

Related…people argued about this headline…

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This wasn’t really any kind of news or drama but. I think Joyce is right. The way people talk like this is absurd. IF a movie/book actually chagend your life i want to hear about it. But I don’t often believe it…

Gay Halloween came (and went) again.

Stephen Colbert thing happened, so this also happened.

He simply doesn’t stop with the hits…

Maybe the moment of the year?!

Joyce drops bars on Elon

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We’re losing the loveseat on the subway and I’m personally very upset about it!

Everyone (myself included, of course!) loved one battle after another <3

I honestly didn’t follow it closely enough to explain but .. something something epstein birthday letters clinton trump. You all know what I’m talking about.

A whole smorgasbord of Oliva Nuzzi / Ryan Lizza weeks began ... and don’t let anyone tell you differently: it was amazing.

Lithub did a twitter bracket and surprise surprise … it was boring

Back to the more important news … the journalists entertainment ball of winter 2025, one might say.

This is a good idea. They should still do this.

The other moment of the year?!

The JEBW2025 continued

Trump obsessed w/ Zohran also continues!

These were some fun weeks OnlInE!

I didn’t stop counting here. I just looked back at everything I liked in December and it was boring. So I will leave you with a contginuation of my earlier observation. ‘This past year was so bad, thank god it’s over,’ that itself is over. How can the next year be good if every year is bad? It won’t happen. Everything sucks, but we’re used to it by now, one must simply laugh. Goodbye!

But not goodbye, because remember it’s January, which means my birthday is coming, and what a great gift it would be to subscribe to my substack as paid, even though everything is still free, because I have no money and you love me. And once I figure out somethings that would make sense to have as paid posts, I will do that, but what can I say, I like having my silly content available to everyone.

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Some people (one guy) tried to trick us into thinking the perfect morning routine was something disturbing involving a face bath of sparkling water and a banana. He was righteously mocked and meme’d.

This is literally all I’m trying to accomplish and yet … but at least the struggle seems to be universal.

At least there are some moments that remind us of positive memories.

Except the website I made it on may have lost my famous Kaylor powerpoint, so actually everything still sucks?! I’m still trying to figure out the status, but I may have to remake it. Which honestly is fine, fun project. Stay tuned.

Then the pope died! Lucky guy.

Prayers up…

Did J.D. Vance kill the pope?

We got a real life Conclave!!! Exciting for those of us who made TikToks about the movie…

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And Lena Dunham tells us why she left New York. Some people think this is useless content. They are wrong. Lena Dunham IS the voice of a generation, of course I want to know her thoughts on moving about the globe!! I would always rather read Lena Dunham in The New Yorker than most people in most publications.

And just like that … NEW POPE! From Chicago.

The Survivor 50 cast announcement finally came! It was mid but we retain some excitement.

Yeah, the problem is, we had all this insane tea about perfect people who were cut! Jerri! Penner! Those two hurt me the most but there are plenty more … le sigh.

But there are things to look forward to.

Sean Rector forever, robbed of returnee status!

Taylor Swift decided NOT to finish her re-records. What the hell, sure.

Trump and Elon meltdown fight!!!!

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There are always dumb new tweet/meme formats, but I liked this one, only in small part because I had a rude semi-hit tweet utilizing it.

I love being a little c*nt online even though one day I will certainly get in trouble for it.

There was a whole wave of Love Island memeing. I didn’t watch it so I don’t totally get it, but it was so pervasive that I must mention it.

Exactly!

Then we reached an actually good and exciting part of the year … perhaps the only … the NYC mayoral election!

In other words…

End of June, or, the point in the year where you realize things are not going as planned.

So Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham gave us something to keep living for!

Maybe this was the okay-est part of the year because we also got a HUGE discoursical treat: THE COLDPLAY COUPLE.

Little late to name the summer but maybe it was chaotic couple summer.

Okay this probably isn’t that exciting to the general populace but I, FOR ONE, was stoked about Carole Radziwill’s return to WWHL and her subsequent Substack.

Then we got to worst song discourse, which I wrote about for this very Substack, so you can look there if you want to laugh and remember :)

Tragically, Trump kept being hilarious.

Taylor announced Life of a Showgirl and we got some memes out of it.

I simply love it when a meme makes the rounds of my favorite past cultural references.

Not too long after, she announced the engagement! Time flies when you’re Miss Taylor.

And…announced it by saying ‘your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.’ No comment!

I always gotta sneak in the Gaylor take.

As usual the news begins to meld.

And we can’t forget Lana announcing Stove.

Some moments make Being Online worthwhile…

For one brief moment we thought Trump was dead / dying

And it was the time of the Epstein birthday book?! So much in that (gestures) realm all at once …

Unfortunately the concept of the Birthday Book is hilarious to me … whoops

Just when They thought we were talking about the birthday letters too much …

Jezebel 4ever

Presented without comment!

Then Jimmy Kimmel made — not even a joke! Just a slightly glib statement! Regarding the above and we had a whole freedom of speech crisis, fml.

Back in the realm of non-political but still horrifying news,

Taylor’s album came out, reactions were mixed but someone in that mix was people thinking cocaine usage makes a protected class…

And it loops back around…

And then Diane Keaton died :( everything continues to suck…

Yes I picked the tweet from my survivor crush … what of it!

And that brings us to the present moment! Everything is shit but I do have fun looking back at the months of shit like this. More from me soon…

THE GAME

you can't win if you don't play

By Matthew Miles Goodrich

Broadly speaking, we will write about social culture, media, New York, literature, how our personal experiences reflect what happens in the world at large, etc, but we’re keeping it broad for a reason. Part of why it’s so hard to find outlets to write for these days is that most of the places have a narrow focus and specific asks for their contributors. It’s tough — you see a new publication created for a specific niche, but then it’s like … great. Now we have one new publication for one specific niche. We’re widening the lens. We want to build a place where our favorite minds can go long on what fascinates them.

Our first round of essays is public. We’ll be developing a structure for paid posts in the coming months, but we want to give everyone the chance to get to know our work and the vibe of the stack before publishing any paid posts. Of course, if you love us and have cash to spare to support three underemployed writers and our future contributors, feel free to go paid from the get-go!

For my first piece, I wrote about my experience bartending at the US Open this year, working to overcome my aversions to work and sports, being a tennis neophyte from a family of fans, a newfound obsession with Novak Djokovic, and steeping myself in the fascinating history of tennis journalism during my brief periods of rest from the tournament. The link is below.

THE GAME

US Open Shut Case

Only one customer commented on my fugue state. Deep in one of our lines-so-long that the end blurs into the crowd, someone looked at me as I poured the vodka-lemonade mixture out of the tap and made an amused comment about our robotic speed and efficiency. I smiled. “The fugue state…

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a year ago · 𝒷𝑒𝒸𝒸𝒶 🌪🥩🍸💸

I hope you will read, and I hope you will enjoy. Let me know what you think, and what you’d like to hear me Go Long on for The Game. Bon appétit!

Like, yes, I did have a moment on drugs to this song at the ONLY music festival I EVER went to with my college bestie. I’ll always have a soft spot. Many songs are worse. As you’ll see. The song discourse continued:

Meanwhile, little did the people know that this debate was settled eons ago. Blair and I’s discussion began because at the time I worked at a bar where I could control the music. Normally I cared about making amazing playlists, and I regularly got compliments from the patrons on my seamless integration of old, new, vibe, strange, etc. But on that particular night, I was angry b/c my crush at work wasn’t texting me back. 

We had bonded over our shared taste in music; it was a large part of why I’d developed a crush in the first place. That, and workplace boredom. I didn’t yet know if he liked me or not (spoiler: he did not,) but in that moment we were texting on-and-off and there were some positive indications. But at Burp Castle, the texts were not texting, I was in a bad mood, and as alchemy does, the elements were correct and something beautiful was created. 

That moment was Blair and I deciding to come up with a playlist of the worst songs ever. The idea being that if he continued to not text me back, instead of playing a charming playlist full of bangers, I could play an evil playlist for torture. So, to get my mind off of the issue at hand, and for fun, we began to make the playlist. 

So instead of continuing to read all these tweets about the worst song ever, treat yourself to the worst PLAYLIST ever. (for torture.) 

Now some folks have already seen this playlist, and said that some songs aren’t so bad. That’s not the point … they’re not all bad in isolation (though most of them are…) the point is, if you were forced to listen to the playlist in its entirty, those songs would make the entire experience that much more bizarre and heinous.

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Some songs are bad in the way that they’re also good. Like, obviously I love Crazy Frog. But it needs a spot on the list. I LOOOOVE Picture by Kid Rock feat. Sheryl Crow, but, nonetheless… Hide and Seek had its moment in the finale of The O.C. season 2. But it’s still worked its way into the vernacular in a way that warrants its inclusion on the playlist.

Others are just classic entries into the bad songs canon. Happy by Pharrell, My Shot from Hamilton, Friday, High Hopes, How You Remind Me, Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)…

We have the things you better put on your DO NOT PLAY list at the wedding or you’ll be screwed: the Electric Slide, Who Let the Dogs Out, Y.M.C.A, I Gotta Feeling, Uptown Funk, Shots, Get the Party Started, Party Rock Anthem (with a bonus of the Chipmunks version also included!)

Some of these songs haunt me in my dreams. I still think about a horrid time at summer camp when the worst counselor ever (for torture, indeed,) forced me, as a Riding Instructor in Training, to dance along with teaching the children the Cotton Eyed Joe dance after a full day of barn work. I can feel my body wilting. That one’s for you, Katie.

You’ll notice we have a few Glee Cast Versions of songs. Acapella deserves its own spot in the hell that is this playlist. Same w/ the Kidz Bop versions.

Some of the songs do have the same vibe as Home. We got Hey There Delilah and Somewhere Only We Know.

In another moment of us being culturally ahead of our time, we had Bring Me To Life on this playlist long before Season 2 of The Rehearsal.

To be clear, I have nothing against New York New York or the Twin Peaks theme song. But again, put it together with the rest of the list. They just belong there. Also RIP Avicii, no offense … Levels just Belongs.

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I love it when the Stars get involved in A Discourse.

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Much of this discourse is a period of historical revisionism, b/c tbh i somewhat agree with this man … there are flops ofc, but for the most part I have major nostalgia and if you put on a playlist of just these songs, it is NOT for torture, it is, instead, for vibes. Sure, I did go to college in the Obama era which was this exact era so I’m blessed to think of outdoor parties in an environmental studies building sunken ampitheater, being wasted in the sunshine, high climbing the mountains, etc, instead of … idk what else was going on b/c I was so busy being fun.

And yeah add to that that life felt worth living b/c hte universe DID feel on a trajectory towards good?! Kill me.

Whatever, I’m all for it. There’s lots to be said about that era. Like looking back yes it was bad and headed towards the end of the world but also … everything sucks why not enjoy a revisit of the Silly Days.

The real losers are, per usual, us, the critics.

Let me know what you think our best picks are. I have a few secret favorites I didn’t mention. And what you’d include — this playlist is over (My final inclusion comes on the recommendation of Emily Gould — Date R*pe by Sublime.) But maybe together we can create a second-worst playlist ever (for torture.)

I’m with Krang on this one. The golden era. Life was still ahead of us. Etc.

The beginning of the year should be a hopeful time, but this past few years, a ‘no, it cannot be’ vibe has taken over. Now we are filled with ennui and it’s hard to fully embrace the tabula rasa mentality that once characterized a new year. It’s giving…

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The theme of my year thus far is something along the lines of “disgusting cleansing.” In the sense of, some things have been disgusting, but they have also been cleansing. For instance, the day before New Years Eve, I got a disturbing text message from someone I’d been interested in slash hung up on for a while, and though the contents and context of said message were disgusting, they were disgusting enough to cleanse me into taking out that particular piece of trash and leaving it behind in 2024. I.e., uncomfortable, but ultimately for the best.

Note to Substack: if there was a feature where you could paywall just a little part of your post and then have it go back to public, I would use it. Instead, I’m just going to vaguely gesture at things that have happened through clues and ephemera…

I can’t really assess yet if disgusting cleansing is just a me thing or a larger trend. I feel like the larger trend continues to be … nonsense? Scary nonsense? Any of my loyal readers have thoughts here?

Either way, the nonsense that is modern life continues: Bono writes about what liberation requires for The Atlantic (?!), Justin Trudeau announces he’s resigning,

Tiktok almost went away but then it didn’t … can we talk about this? Has it become a full nothingburger? Or may it still leave? Does anyone know? 

Neil Gaiman revealed as a sex pest abuser squared. I was too disgusted to read the entire article so I just read the Hollywood Reporter summary. I certainly got the gist!

Barack and Michelle divorce rumors: I’ve never wished for anything more? I think about it every day?

Why? Um, I don’t know, because it would be messy and funny and cool. I always theorize that truly big time couples like this (Jay Z and Beyonce, that level, don’t care about anyone below) are super unlikely to get divorced because … who else would they marry? Or even date? (In this case, Jennifer Aniston, of course.) So, I wait every day for one such couple to Do It so I can see what they would do in the aftermath. I don't care if this sounds uncaring or whatevs … war criminal I’m just a girl etc…

Inauguration was an insane day in theory but it simply passed like any other? And now we are in a second Trump term? Yeah I’m not going to start believing Time is real anytime soon, that’s for sure.

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David Lynch died and it was very sad, people brought out some incredible moments from his life in memoriam ….

TBT, pour one out (for both David and Bernie campaign, always)

Pamela Paul is OUT at NYT opinion!

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My birthday is in January, and my new years party was a hit despite an evil person trying to throw a wrench into it, so I thought, perfect, time to throw another party. 

I was goofing off in Partiful and just decided to call the party Secrets Revealed, though I really had no idea what I meant by that. I just love secrets, and secrets revealed is of course an iconic reality tv tagline. It served me well because some people said they were double-inspired to come to the party purely to find out what secrets reveal meant. I was also excited to find out what it meant.

I hosted a couple of friends from college who recently moved upstate the weekend before the party, and they suggested that I make the Activiy based on the classic internet phenom Postsecret. I considered this a genius idea because as a teen, I was obsessed with Postsecret. I had like four of the books and I would even make my own little postsescret books – more on this later.

In case you don’t remember PostSecret, people sent secrets on postcards to some guy. It was a whole thing. Some classics:

(Obviously this is my favorite of all time lmao)

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The day before my birthday, I threw a wrench into my own plans by going to a Drift Party. No offense to The Drift, love the editors and they throw a great party but … this is a place where nothing good happens! My friend once puked so bad she had to get carried through the Jane Hotel lobby. I did nothing better.

The first thing that happened when we walked in to the random fancy Greek restaurant at which the party was held is that my friend saw an enemy lurking alone behind us. Or, well, someone we assumed would be an enemy because of their involvement in my previously mentioned New Years near-debacle. We hadn’t actually met this person yet, but recognized them from their Twitter pic, as their Twitter had been another instrumental part of the said debacle. Sorry that I’m like this. I hate my life. We did not speak to the person yet, but we did laugh at the absurdity of our dumb lives.

We ran into many friends, a good time was had by all. Too good of a time, one might say. Because during all of this I was simply … drinking martinis ?! I’m a moron. 

At one point, I was on my way to the bathroom, but someone called my name. It was a friendly ex, flanked by THE TWO PEOPLE I MOST WISHED TO SPEAK TO AT THE PARTY?!

My favorite person (Lake Micah) and my potential enemy (name withheld). My favorite person was entertaining and perfect as usual and in a wonderful turn of events, my potential enemy was incredibly boring!!! The dream scenario! Tooo dull to even be an enemy!

We then watched the potential enemy scamper away to chase after an elder party boy and we laughed and laughed and laughed.

There was also a crazy lady trying to buy us shots but getting distracted b/c she was so drunk, me asking for Fernet and getting offered free Jager instead (which I took, downfall of my night,) and the inevitable lit party appearance of Ray from Girls.

Well, it was all fun and games until I woke up the next morning with a deathly hangover. And then I made another mistake, knowing I needed to eat something – and choosing leftover Chipotle. I was sure I’d be better by the time of my party – but as the hours ticked by, it became apparent that I’d be … not better.

Many a person asked me why I didn’t cancel the party. Well, I thought I would get better! I rarely have an all night hangover! Also, idk, whatever, the show must go on.

My friends came to the rescue – a few people came over early and helped clean the apartment, set up snacks, etc, and one special friend was tasked with making an official SECRET BOX in my secret upstairs lair.

People started to arrive. I was, alas, coming back and forth from the bahtroom, PUKING. I know. So embarrassing. 

One of my friends had finished decorating the SECRET BOX, so another started walking around and giving people papers to write a secret on. Then it goes in the box, then we read it later, etc.

When I came downstairs from one of my tragic bathroom trips, I heard that my SECRET BOX was already causing the drama it asked for. My cousin was ranting to one of my friends about how it was “just like me” to have a have a SECRET BOX at my party.

“This is all she ever does. Talks about secrets and then you know what she’s going to do next?! Write about them! Of course she conned us into this party and now she’s going to write about it!”

Through my sickness I could still laugh. I don’t even know if I would have thought to write about it if she hadn’t said it! But it’s true, I am an evil puppet master of secrecy.

Despite me lying on the couch like a consumption victim, the party was (for everyone else) a success. I can be a bit of a party micromanager, so it was actually good to be physically unable to flit around the room making sure everyone had a conversation partner, and rather watch from my sickbed as people met each other without my intervention.

SECRETS FROM THE SECRET BOX

 I am DESPERATE to know who this is! I kept looking around the room from my sickbed and looking at various fiancés and wondering who they could possibly look like! If this was you please tell me! For my health!

Not one but two cousin-themed secrets…

And, last (of this brief showing) but not least, here’s the callback to my earlier statement about making your own PostSecrets:

Touché to my sister…

If you’re wondering why I’m like this…i.e. forcing people into a mini social experiment as I lay dying at my own birthday…

 Anyway, despite my being stupid and hungover, the party was a success. Life went back to normal. I healed. Meanwhile, some discourses….

There was a whole NYMag story about some Trump freaks … partying? Ok word I’ve been partying since 2007 but I guess if that’s newsworthy these days …

And yes, better parties, consistently. This looks like a joke! Apparently one of the girls was “the hot one” but again … in the words of Sandra Diaz-Twine … I don’t know about that …

Also she’s a sorority president? Bitch I look younger than you.

In some local news … Sean Thor Conroe tried to claim he invented readings.

Mitch McConnell fell down the stairs?

I liked the Super Bowl.

Some thought it was boring, but I think a sweep like that is the least boring way a game can go, in some sense … like why does a game have to be close for it to be interesting? Can we not be interested in the strangeness of a shutout of a wildly successful team? And also enjoying watching those rich men be sad? And then of course, Kendrick performed, brought Serena Williams out, etc. All that is good to me, not boring …

Revenge kings rise up :)

Incredible commercials included Seal as a Seal and Jeremy Strong in a vat.

Never forget!

:(

Also a big night for B/Coops and his loyal fans (me)

And we got this cutie?! Overall great experience everyone who said it was boring is Wrong.

It’s soooo cool by which I mean incredibly embarrassing that Travis had to put this outfit back on to walk out a loser … serves him right …

Normally I am an SNL hater, but I was convinced to watch the anniversary music special with some friends and I … may be a convert?! Just kidding, you will never convince me to like sketch comedy. But Cher?! Incredible. Almost 80 years old!! And David Byrne and Robyn … two Y in a random place in their name kings …

Now planes keep crashing. Not great! We do not love it folks!!!

People kept talking about getting oneshotted. I for one never figured out what it meant.

J.D. Vance face memes EVERYWHERE

ScarJo drops a new iconic line

We reach the present moment. And my new favorite meme.

FIN

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JANUARY

I encounter the first tweet that embeds itself in my brain, I hear it daily.

Discourse: should people be allowed to buy accessories for their water bottles?

#never4get

Paul Giamatti takes his Golden Globe to In-and-Out

MEME: Josh

NYT weighs in

Joshuary

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“Why yams”

Monika correct about eye patches being “back”

Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie don’t get Oscars; people including Hillary Clinton are upset

MEME: Me at 1 day pregnant

FEBRUARY

Taylor announces TTPD

Grammys: Joni performs and we all fall apart, it seemed like Taylor dissed Celine, everyone was mad that Taylor brought Lana onstage bc they thought it was mean but it was bc she was on the same record, afterward Taylor hugged Ceilne to negate diss rumors, Tracy chapman and Luke combs fast car performance

Emily publishes maybe my favorite essay of the year? People are predictably weird but she as usual prevails

Liz Lenz tries to make it about herself

Financial advice columnist got scammed for $50k, everyone dunks, young people vindicated for never answering the phone 

Mr. piss rounds it out

Flaco dies :( 

MARCH

Kate Middleton photoshop drops, WATERKATE begins

I wrote about it

It was cancer :/

The Cut strikes again

I wrote about this also

Alex and I talk Worry for Interview Mag :)

Beyonce Jolene cover does not live up to hype

MEME: seems insane that DFW looked like this

APRIL 

People fight about whether Connections is too hard 

Media party discourse?

NYC earthquake! I was in my elevator so I didn’t feel it.

Eclipse

The Renata Adler of Looking at Your Phone a Lot (apparently same day as the eclipse … wild)

OJ Simpson DIES (after I’d been obsessed with him for months … my mind), also wrote about it 

TTPD drops

The simulation starts to glitch

DIRT asks: What is the ideal level of fame?

MAY

MEME: two people who match each others’ freak

Enter: Jack Schlossberg

Ben and J.Lo breakup redux?

Another tweet I hear in my head daily — I don't think the original was actually this year but idc idc

Trump convicted of … something

JUNE

GQ 1995 overrated list resurfaces

Fresh string of Big is moving … posts

We discovered “Let Jax do the peeling”

The people discover Hot Ed Ricketts

THIS IS GOING TO RUIN THE TOUR….THE WORLD TOUR…

Boy Smells releases Poppers candle (I own it)

I write about AB as meme for NYT :) 

Some memes for reference

Joe Biden very unwell at debate

Meanwhile in Schlossbergland…

Hawk tuah happened here I guess …

JULY

Brat summer (sorry … I know it started earlier …)

We become coconut-pilled, RIP

MEME: the inside out characters if it was filmed in my head

Jack Schlossberg becomes Vogue correspondent

George Clooney tells Biden to retire bitch

“President Putin of Ukraine”

Heavyweight group of super friends

Trump shot

Trump picks J.D. Vance

Pasta board in Milwaukee

Biden drops out while Wolf Blitzer is drinking

Something good happens: Olympics in Paris

Michelle writes about tarot for Dirt <3

AUGUST

Tim Walz selected … cry

Another one I hear in my head daily

I see one movie in the theaters this year, It Ends With Us. Did not know what was to come…

Daisy profiled in NYT <3

Men have called her crazy? Women have called her boring…

SEPTEMBER

Lana steps out w/ Mr. Crocodile

Ben and J.Lo metronome swings again

Olivia Nuzzi x RFK Jr affair reveal